Price-Cap Review Dataset

The Price-Cap Review Dataset (PCRD) contains data on demand, rates, and revenue for selected U.S. local telephone companies from 1992 to 2009. These data have been publicly filed at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as part of annual access tariff filings. The filings are Tariff Review Plans (TRPs) for price-cap regulated local telephone companies.[1] The TRPs describe ILECs interstate access rates and provide for review of rate changes. The PCRD compiles a key section of the TRPs in order to facilitate exploratory analysis of local telephone services and price-cap regulation and to foster better informed public policy deliberation.

This dataset is neither an official nor authoritative compilation. The official FCC public record of tariff filings is the FCC's Electronic Tariff Filing System (ETFS). Annual access filings for 2003 to 2009 are currently available online through ETFS. One way to find annual access filings is to search by company name for June 10 to June 20 for the filing year of interest.

The file PCRD
notes.txt provides minor data notes and descriptions of the most significant
changes across versions of the PCRD.

You should verify and validate figures
in this dataset as appropriate for your particular purposes. All available
TRPs can be downloaded in bulk from the TRP archive. The rate detail files that are the basis for the figures in
the TRPs are also available. Intermediate-form compilations of the TRP RTE
sections are also available (rte 1992-1999, rte 2000-2009). These
intermediate forms include some descriptive lines not included in the
PCRD.

You can show appreciation for the public
availability of the PCRD by notifying Douglas Galbi about any errors you discover in it, by
improving and extending the dataset, and by sharing your extensions and analysis
of the dataset with everyone.

Dataset Description

The FCC standardizes yearly the form of
the TRP that all filing carriers use. The PCRD is construted from the RTE
section of the TRPs. Almost all the ILEC-specific data included in the TRP are
in a TRP section labeled RTE-1 (rate review section 1). Because TRPs filed
from 1992 to the present include only one RTE section, RTE is used here to refer
to the TRP section labeled RTE-1. That section is also written as RTE1 in
some FCC orders.

A category of data not included in the
RTE are exogenous costs for the filing year. Exogenous cost items are sale
of exchanges, regulatory fees, excess deferred taxes, Investment Tax Credit
(ITC) amortization, “removal of low end adjustment”, “trueup prior sharing / low
end adjustment”, “current low end adjustment”, telecommunications relay services
(communications services for persons with disabilities), “reg/non-reg” (changes
in the allocation of costs between regulated and unregulated activities), North
American Numbering Plan (NANP) expenses, removal of thousand block number
pooling (TBNP), and other exogenous expenses that an ILEC claims, e.g. some
payphone expenses and some local-number portability (LNP) expenses.
The RTE includes price-cap indices (PCIs), actual price indices (APIs), and
sub-band price indices (SBIs). Exogenous cost items not included in the
RTE are important for interpreting changes in PCIs.

The Price-Cap RTE Dataset (PCRD)
includes RTEs from 1992 to 2009. The filings are from the annual access filing
(about mid-June of filing year). Some carriers filed revisions to annual
filings, and in earlier years some annual filings could not be located.
The specific filings included in the PCRD were chosen on the basis of the most
accurate and complete representation of annual filing data. Thus if
revisions were made, and the revised filing was available, that filing was
chosen for inclusion. If an annual filing could not be located, the
available filing closest to an annual filing was sought. See the filing
dates in Table 1 for identification of specific filings included in the
PCRD.

The PCRD includes some filings for
thirteen historical ILEC serving areas. The PCRD includes RTEs for the all
the original Regional Bell Operation Company (RBOC) services areas.
Company serving areas (cosa’s) covered are described in Tables 1 and 2
below. Note that coverage for filing years 1992 and 1993 is significantly
less than for filing years 1994-2009. Imputations are thus necessary to
construct aggregations for 1992-1993 that are consistent with those for
1994-2009. The historical construction of the New Bell Atlantic (BNTR) and
then Verizon (VZTC) combined the Bell Atlantic, Nynex, and GTE serving areas
included in the PCRD. The Verizon filings for 2006-2009 include GTE
serving areas not previously in the PCRD. In 2007, 14% of Verizon switched
access lines were in GTE serving areas not previously included in serving areas
in the PCRD. These additional lines amount to 5% of switched access lines
covered by the PCRD in 2007.

The PCRD covers a substantial share of
U.S. switched access lines. The PCRD includes ILEC serving areas with 90%
and 86% of switched access lines subject to price-cap regulation in 1994 and
2007, respectively. It includes ILEC serving areas with 80% and 64% of all
U.S. switched access (both price-cap regulated and rate-of-return regulated
lines) in 1994 and 2007, respectively. The underlying data and
calculations for these figures are documented in the online PCRD coverage workbook (also Excel version ). Lines included in the PCRD are not,
however, a representative sample of U.S. switched access lines. The PCRD
mainly includes lines from large ILECs. Smaller ILECs and competitive LECs
have significantly different regulation and rate structures than do large
ILECs.

Demand and rate fields exist only for
TRP categories that encompass only one rate element. In same cases, the
reported revenue is not the same as revenue calculated from the reported rate
and demand figures. In the PCRD, 41 lines have a revenue
inconsistency greater than $100. For details, see the revenue inconsistency spreadsheet (here as an Excel file). The largest revenue inconsistency is
about $2.7 million. A possible source of these inconsistencies is
reporting demand and rates with less precision than was used in calculating the
reported revenue.

The PCRD table "rte 1992-2009 v3.txt" contains the RTE data lines for
all cosa’s. Descriptive, non-data lines from the RTEs have been preserved
where consistent with field definitions, i.e. text fields. Selecting on a
year / cosa and sorting on line number (ln) will place these descriptive records
in source-order relative to the data records. The table “template v3.txt” describes the standardized TRP across
years. The template table is used to add or modify descriptive category
fields in the rte table. To update the rte table with different template
entries, join the rte table to the template table using the lcode field. Filter
records by rte year field falling within year-s and year-e in the template
table. The template table can be easily updated to accommodate additional years’
data appended to the rte table by incrementing year-e fields of 2009, and making
whatever additional changes are appropriate. Not dynamically joining the
rte and template tables allow queries to run faster and the rte table to be
analyzed independently from the template table.

Note that the use of subtotal lines is
ad hoc in the RTEs. Hence care must be exercised in summing categories to
compute aggregates. Some categories include total lines (as well as index
lines). The template table should be inspected to determine how to get
aggregates.

Multiple TRP filings are included for
some cosa’s for some years. The filing date field, and, where necessary
the version field, differentiate between multiple filings. The field yrf
(year reference filing) picks out specific filings to be considered for trend
analysis. The field can be switched on and off for different filings to include
different filings in the trend analysis. The Bell Atlantic (BATR) and
Nynex (NXTR) filings were subsumed in the new Bell Atlantic (BNTR) and then
Verizon (VZTC), which also incorporated the GTE companies.
Consistent trend analysis should exclude BATR and NXTR in aggregates if BNTR is
included.

Descriptive fields added to the RTE data
records are basket, cat1 to cat3, zone, and band. These descriptive fields
follow directly from the standardized specification of the RTE data lines (lname
and associated FCC TRP definitions). The fields cat1 to cat3 use
abbreviations similar to those used in the bandwidth demand and prices datasets. See the
descriptions for those datasets to better understand abbreviations used in
cat1-3. The field cat3 includes tags differentiating between premium services
(services that provide Feature Group D equal access to presubscribed interstate
interexchange carriers) and non-premium services (which do not support equal
access). Tags in cat2 differentiate local switching (tagged in cat1)
between LS1 (Feature Group A and B service) and LS2 (Feature Group C and D
service). Premium, LS2 services predominate in minutes of use for cosa’s
included in the PCRD. Codes for “total” occur in cat1, cat2, and
cat3. The field containing the total code depends on the position of the
total line in the aggregation hierarchy. The same is true for index codes
API, PCI, SBI, upper SBI, and lower SBI. The template table should
be consulted to understand how to select appropriately on cat fields to get
consistent data across years.

Note that
demand and rate fields are blank for data lines that encompass more than one
rate element. Demand and rates for all rate elements are listed in
unstructured rate detail files.

field
containing PCI, API, and SBI indices and bands, according to line
specification

Table 4

Field Descriptions for Template Table

field

description

ln

line
sequence number (most useful in conjunction with selection of records with
a common start year)

year-s

filing
year the standardized data line entered the TRP

year-e

last
filing year the standardized data line was in the TRP

lcode

standardized data line code (used in match to data
lines in RTE table)

lname

line
description from the TRP (some variants across years)

basket

price cap
basket to which the line belongs

cat1

cat1-cat3
are descriptive tags for the line

cat2

cat3

zone

service
zone associated with the line

band

band
associated with the line

Source file notes

The TRP
archive contains the original source files used to make the PCRD as
well as all other available TRPs filed for price-cap local telephone companies
in the specified years. These original sources are Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets in
.wk3 and .wk4 formats. The source files are grouped by year. These years
represents the filing years for the associated source files. Typically, the main
annual filing is made about June 15 of a given year. However, filings also
include preliminary annual access filings, revisions to the annual access files,
special filings of various sorts, and filings not part of the annual access
filing. These source files allow for a reconstruction of the PCRD.
They also provide the material for the construction of a more comprehensive
dataset.

Identifying files within years depends on file names,
file dates, and header information within files. For source files in yearly TRP
collections prior to 2007 and rate detail collections prior to 2003, file names
are typically derived from COSA (COmpany Service Area) codes. For annual
filings, the COSA code is typically followed by the letters "AN" and then an
indication of the year (e.g. 95 indicating 1995). Additional filings often have
a named formed from the COSA code followed by digits indicating the specific
filing date, e.g. "6160" indicating a filing data of June 16, 2000 (month 6, day
16, year 0), or "7074" indicating July 7, 1994 (month 7, day 07, year 4).
Alternative versions of a filing are sometimes indicated with a "-b" or "-c".
This naming convention is used when two files with different file dates
originally had the same name in the source collections. For rate detail filings,
the file name and the file modify date often are the only direct information
available for identifying a filing. TRPs, however, have in spreadsheet area
A1:G4 specific filing identification information.

Source files names in TRP collections for years 2007 and
later and rate detail collections for 2003 and later are much less systematic.
Moreover, file creation/modification dates provide no relevant information. The
source filings include all spreadsheet filings on ETFS in June and July for
years from 2007 and from 2003 for TRPs and rate detail filings, respectively.
For these filings, file names have been derived from the description field in
the ETFS filing metadata. For TRPs, spreadsheet area A1:G4 continues to provide
specific filing identification information. Rate detail files typically show
some consistency in naming patterns (and the number of files in a multi-file
filing) across years.

The TRP source archive includes several supplementary
directories. It includes an alternate set of year collections for the years from
2003 to 2006. This alternative set is possibly useful in the case of a missing
filing in the main collection. In almost all cases these alt year directories
can be ignored. The TRP source archive also includes a "usw converted"
directory. This contains US West TRPs converted to Excel format. It thus
provides for each year a sample filing converted to Excel format. Because the
original filing is retained in its year directory, the "usw converted" directory
is not relevant to a comprehensive conversion of all the original source files.